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Activity 02

Running Python Program in Visual Studio

Following up on my previous analysis, today's task involves executing Python within the Visual Studio IDE.

1) Your program.

2) The output that displays your variables as frequency tables.

3) Describe your frequency distributions in terms of the values the variables take, how often they take them, the presence of missing data, etc.

An examination of the frequency table reveals a significant presence of repeated values across both "breastcancerper100th" and "suicideper100th" variables. This suggests that each data point appears only once within the dataset.  Furthermore, there is an estimated 25% of missing data for each variable under investigation.

In accordance with the suggestion of my colleagues, I have incorporated a specific country into my analysis for enhanced detail.  Mexico, my home nation, was chosen for this purpose.  As illustrated in the final image, I concentrated on the data pertaining to breast cancer and suicide rates in Mexico specifically.  Through this analysis, I discovered that the prevalence of breast cancer is 26.4%, while the rate of suicide is 4.2885%.

[laud03]

Activity 01

Following my review of the Gapminder study codebook, I have chosen to conduct an analysis of a global health concern: breast cancer.  In conjunction with this primary focus, I will also explore the issue of suicide rates per hundred thousand individuals.

Question: Is breast cancer associated with suicide per 100th?

Variables: breastcancerper100th and suicideper100th

Hypothesis: Women diagnosed with breast cancer may be more likely to commit suicide compared to the general population.

Literature review:  

Suicide After Breast Cancer: an International Population-Based Study of 723 810 Women

Catherine Schairer, Linda Morris Brown, Bingshu E. Chen, Regan Howard, Charles F. Lynch, Per Hall, Hans Storm, Eero Pukkala, Aage Anderson, Magnus Kaijser ... Show more

Summary: Few studies have examined long-term suicide risk among breast cancer survivors, and there are no data for women in the United States. We quantified suicide risk through 2002 among 723 810 1-year breast cancer survivors diagnosed between January 1, 1953, and December 31, 2001, and reported to 16 population-based cancer registries in the United States and Scandinavia. Among breast cancer survivors, we calculated standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and excess absolute risks (EARs) compared with the general population, and the probability of suicide. We used Poisson regression likelihood ratio tests to assess heterogeneity in SMRs; all statistical tests were two-sided, with a .05 cutoff for statistical significance. In total 836 breast cancer patients committed suicide (SMR = 1.37, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.28 to 1.47; EAR = 4.1 per 100 000 person-years). Although SMRs ranged from 1.25 to 1.53 among registries, with 245 deaths among the sample of US women (SMR = 1.49, 95% CI = 1.32 to 1.70), differences among registries were not statistically significant ( P for heterogeneity = .19). Risk was elevated throughout follow-up, including for 25 or more years after diagnosis (SMR = 1.35, 95% CI = 0.82 to 2.12), and was highest among black women (SMR = 2.88, 95% CI = 1.44 to 5.17) ( P for heterogeneity = .06). Risk increased with increasing stage of breast cancer ( P for heterogeneity = .08) and remained elevated among women diagnosed between 1990 and 2001 (SMR = 1.36, 95% CI = 1.18 to 1.57). The cumulative probability of suicide was 0.20% 30 years after breast cancer diagnosis.

Topic: cancerheterogeneityearfollow-upscandinaviasurvivorsdiagnosissuicidebreast cancerlikelihood ratiosuicidal behaviortnm breast tumor stagingstandardized mortality ratio

Issue Section: Brief Communications

References:  

(1) Rowland J, Mariotto A, Aziz N, Tesauro G, Feuer EJ, Blackman D, et al. Cancer survivorship — United States, 1971 – 2001. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2004 ; 53 : 526 – 9.

(2) Ries LAG, Eisner MP, Kosary CL, Hankey BF, Miller BA, Clegg L, et al., editors. SEER cancer statistics review, 1975 – 2002. Bethesda (MD): National Cancer Institute; 2004. Available at: http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2002 . [Last accessed: September 22, 2005.]

(3) Yousaf U, Christensen M-LM, Engholm G, Storm HH. Suicides among Danish cancer patients 1971 – 1999. Br J Cancer 2005 ; 92 : 995 – 1000.